[poky] RPM vs IPK

[Gary Thomas]

On 03/21/2011 05:57 AM, Richard Purdie wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-03-20 at 19:58 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
>> I know that historically Poky has used 'ipk' as the primary packaging
>> mechanism.  It seems that now Poky/Yocto has move to 'rpm'.  My distribution
>> is still using ipk, but I'm happy to change, given a good argument.
>>
>> * Is there such [a good reason] to use rpm over ipk?
>> * What are the pros and cons?  I'm mostly interested in very resource limited
>>     deeply embedded systems which often only run from FLASH.
>>
>> Thanks for any comments
>
> My advice is that for such a resource limited system, you're probably
> best of sticking to ipk, particularly if you have it working already.
>
> opkg:
>
> * Has a smaller disk footprint
> * Is generally faster than rpm
>
> rpm+zypper:
>
> * More of an industry standard
> * Emphasises correctness and robustness over speed (e.g. number of
>    fsync calls)

Does this mean ipk/opkg fails along these lines in any way?

> * Has desktop/enterprise features

Such as?

> * Not optimised for size (e.g. uses c++)
>
> I'd not say one was better than the other, they're just different and
> suit different use cases.

Pretty much what I thought, thanks.

My only concern is that if rpm is the primary emphasis, ipk/opkg might
suffer from rot.

-- 
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Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
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